


A Different Fate

by mooglecharm (morphaileffect)



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Angst, Brothers, Canonical Character Death, Family, Family Secrets, Gen, Ignis as a lost son of Tenebrae, Repressed Memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:13:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28318032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morphaileffect/pseuds/mooglecharm
Summary: The visions Pryna showed Ignis as she lay dying were not only about the future - they were also about the past: about a family he left long ago, and a lullaby he thought he had forgotten.
Relationships: Ravus Nox Fleuret & Ignis Scientia
Comments: 3
Kudos: 11





	A Different Fate

**Author's Note:**

> Merry Christmas, mochatrope ♥♥♥
> 
> A while back, mochatrope introduced me to this hauntingly beautiful ["Once Upon a December" cover by Dan Virgoreo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cr82elH1bJI), and y'all are required to listen to it because it inspired the lullaby Ravus is singing here.
> 
> This fic takes off from an idea mochatrope had. Pretty much sticks with canon all the way up to where Ignis gets his visions from a dying Pryna. Everything happens differently from that point.

Dew amplifying the scent of night-blooming flowers, evening wind through the leaves greeting him with an ethereal sigh as he opened his eyes.

The silhouettes of three people: a woman, a young boy, and a toddler, all bent over him, their faces obscured from him by the light that was all around.

Feeling warm and protected. Safe. At peace.

A woman’s voice, singing, somewhere neaby -

Pryna returned all of this to Ignis as she drew her last breath and vanished.

It came after the Prophecy - the one that sounded strange, different yet somehow _clearer_ , coming from the mouth of a god. After the many images that Ignis had yet to make sense of, the ones fraught with the feeling of dread and inevitability.

But those last few visions Pryna left him did not fit into the Prophecy.

They felt the strangest of all. Over all of it was a very faint melody: the woman’s song, lingering at the edge of his consciousness...

And as Ignis focused, it became clearer.

However -

The song held form in the voice of a man, not a woman. The melody was the same, and as for the lyrics - they were less than clear in Ignis’ mind, but some words chanted by the singer fit into the blanks that his faulty memories inscribed.

It was a lullaby.

...How did he know it was a lullaby?

“That,” he labored to utter, “that song...”

The singing stopped. Ignis was almost sad that it did so. It restored a familiar tension to the place - one that meant war, that meant nothing safe or warm or peaceful.

They were in the burning ruins of a once-lovely city, nowhere suited for a lullaby. Fire and smoke was everywhere. Corpses floated in the water that surrounded them.

Lord Ravus Nox Fleuret, slumped on the stone floor of the dock, looked over his shoulder at Ignis, without looking at him directly.

“What would you know of it, Lucian?” he would have shouted, but his voice broke and the words failed to bear the force of his intentions.

There were tears in his eyes. He held his sister in his arms. His sister, Lunafreya, the Oracle of Tenebrae, bled onto his clothes, his skin...

And he had been singing.

A lullaby.

To ease her into sleep.

“It’s about,” Ignis said in barely a whisper, “home. And images in the snow. My mother used to sing it...”

He could feel Ravus fall deathly still - sensed his eyes widen, his breath catch in his throat.

“...to me, my brother and sister,” Ignis finished, “a long time ago.”

The Oracle was dead. Her skin was pale, her chest still. There was nothing left to sing to.

But Ravus still held her close.

“That’s impossible,” Ravus acidly responded. “My mother, the former Oracle, Sylva Via Fleuret, composed it herself. She only sang it to her children.”

“Yet,” Ignis answered cautiously, breathless with recollection, “I remember.”

“Are all Lucians so disrespectful?” The heartbreak and anger in Ravus’ voice were undeniable. “Leave me and my sister be. Attend to your worthless King.”

“Wait...”

Ignis stumbled toward Ravus and his sister, fell to his knees on the ground near them both.

Ravus glared at him, a steady, murderous glare. He was in no condition to listen. Ignis saw it clearly enough.

And Noct lay nearby, unconscious and vulnerable. But no threat was in sight, and this couldn’t wait.

Ignis felt like his mind was being broken open. Like his entire history was being rewritten before his eyes.

“She would change the last line,” Ignis softly recounted. “One night, she would sing of birds on the wing. The next, horses with bells tied to their hooves. It was never the same line twice. But it would always be of something beautiful. Something she loved.”

Ravus audibly gasped. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Which was only fair, because Ignis could hardly believe it, himself.

But it was true. All of it.

“She once sang...about a girl wearing a hooded cape. It amused my sister.” Ignis smiled, through his own confusion. “She had a favorite hooded cape, which she wore almost every day. She knew that Mother sang of it.”

“Insolence,” Ravus hissed. “You must have heard that from somewhere. You know nothing of our family.”

“We walked through a garden daily.” Ignis was recounting. “I rode on your shoulders. You...once liked to laugh.”

It was one of the visions Pryna showed him. It became better defined in his mind as he said it aloud.

And the clearer the images of the garden became, the more Ignis was able to speak more about them. The memory of sunlight and the colors of strange flowers that would not have grown outside of Tenebrae grew brighter, as if drifting out of a dream.

He remembered Ravus - tall for his age, lean and strong at nine years old, bearing a small toddler on his back or on his shoulders. Nearby was little Luna, occasionally smiling at the babbling child whom her older brother carried around - but otherwise thoughtful and quiet and calm.

Ravus listened in silence for a while, his hold on the body of his sister growing no looser.

When Ignis was done, he slowly began to speak:

“You kept reaching for the stonefruit. We warned you they were not for eating, but you were too small to understand. You only had two front teeth. They were frail.” A single tear escaped the corner of Ravus’ undamaged right eye as he chuckled. “You broke one biting into the skin of one of them, and then you cried. You were bleeding, and Lunafreya was distraught, but I couldn’t help teasing you. I knew Mother would be able to heal you right away.”

He reached out a hand still wet with fresh blood, and thoughtlessly touched Ignis’ cheek.

“Sidus,” he whispered in disbelief, searching Ignis’ eyes for a sign of something he recognized. “They said you’d died.”

Ignis tentatively touched the fingers on his face. Though bloodied, Ravus’ skin was cold. Like the ice of Niflheim.

“They said the carriage you were in fell and...they couldn’t find your body. That demons must have taken it. Mother was in mourning...for weeks.”

There was one other thing that Pryna had shown Ignis...

But he was not certain if it was the right time to tell anyone about it. Not even his brother.

It was about a carriage traveling in the dead of night, while Lucis and Tenebrae slept. The carriage bore Queen Sylva Nox Fleuret and a small child.

When the carriage stopped, it was at a clearing where three long, black-colored cars waited.

Out of one of them stepped a young King Regis, and an attendant.

After a final kiss on his forehead, the Queen handed the sleeping boy over to the King...and as she did, tears fell from her eyes.

The young King took the child with the greatest of care, so he did not even stir.

 _“Thank you for giving him a chance at a different fate,”_ the Queen said quietly. _“Please...take care of my son.”_

The King promised that he would. The Queen witnessed him handing the child over to his attendant - a man he called Scientia. Someone with a stern demeanor and gentle hands.

Ignis was drawn out of his reverie when Ravus moved his hand from Ignis’ cheek, and gripped his shoulder.

The grip was insistent, bordering on painful.

“Sidus,” he said in a low, urgent voice. “I do not know why Lucis stole you from us...there is much for us to discuss, but there is no time. We are the only ones of the Oracle’s blood left alive, do you understand?”

As he spoke, the body of his sister began to fade.

Ravus’ hands - flesh and metal - kept trying to hold on to her until the last minute.

When she disappeared, his empty hands balled into fists.

There was no sign of her left. It was as if she was never there.

And her brothers remained, mourning her absence.

“Live,” Ravus said to Ignis in a voice hoarse from holding back tears. “Never forgive.”

**Author's Note:**

> Google tells me that Sidus = star.
> 
> Stella = star.
> 
> So, in this alternate universe, we have a Sidus Nox Fleuret instead of a Stella Nox Fleuret.
> 
> With his father's (presumably) green eyes and light brown hair :)


End file.
